


I’ll kiss you again, between the bars

by RChaha



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Ghosts get involved, I haven’t written in so long I don’t know how to tag things, M/M, even they are like.. this is enough, please just read it, who can blame them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:42:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27229789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RChaha/pseuds/RChaha
Summary: Ryan is a little bit in love with Shane. A ghost tries to play wingman.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 8
Kudos: 144





	I’ll kiss you again, between the bars

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally 4. 6 k words of feelings I have about these boys, and the feelings I have about their feelings towards each other. I don’t mean any harm to their personal lives, yada yada yada, if you’re from Buzzfeed or know them personally what are you doing here you weirdo yada yada 
> 
> If you catch the Dawson’s Creek reference you get ten thousand brownie points 
> 
> Also the place they go here is completely made up obviously. Although I’d like to think there’s a lesbian ghost out there pushing people together... somewhere.

The thing is, Ryan would never classify his and Shane’s relationship as “normal.” How normal could it be that they’re two best friends who hunt ghouls together for their work? He recognizes that there is a level of complexity to their dynamic that Ryan will never truly understand, because he could never truly understand Shane. Not for a lack of trying though. It was easy to dismiss Ryan Bergara, seeing him as a superstitious, scared boy, unable to discern the real world from an imaginary one. But, as much as some Youtube comments might disagree, Ryan is not naive. He knows which way is up. He knows that objectively, iced coffee is better than hot coffee, (although hot coffee is more comforting) there is more to this world than meets the eye, gender is a social construct, and no one quite makes him feel the way that Shane makes him feel. He’s maybe, just maybe, a little fond of one Shane Madej. He’s never actively thought about that last fact, which unfortunately does not make it any less real. Ryan’s.. enamorment with Shane has now become something of an.. undercurrent, always there under the surface, noticeable in small moments of weakness. Those feelings, those devilish, stupid, idiotic, ridiculous feelings probably would have remained continually repressed if they hadn’t been forcibly pushed out of him. 

Those feelings come out in small moments, in the fondness of the nickname “big guy,” the way he holds the door out for Shane whenever they go on a lunch break together. It’s the way he knows Shane’s coffee order (iced americano with cream, no sugar) his favorite Lord of the Rings movie (Fellowship of the Ring) and his favorite song. (Between the Bars by Elliott Smith) Their lives have gotten so enmeshed that sometimes it’s hard to really see where Ryan’s life stops and Shane’s life begins. At this point, they’re just Ryan and Shane. So maybe it’s not as much of a crush as it is that Ryan cannot imagine his life without Shane, that being with him has become as easy as breathing, and being without him feels like walking around with a missing limb. In all his life, Ryan had never felt like that before. What do you call needing someone around to make you feel whole? It wasn’t that he was reluctant to call.. whatever he felt for Shane.. a crush because it felt too big. If he was really being honest with himself, (which was occasional, but it did happen) it was because “crush” sounded too small.

But he had it under control, even if he could feel his body slowly starting to respond to his stupidly gangly friend. The way that Shane will make a comment under his breath, just to Ryan, and look down at him with a smirk and they’ll just start laughing. Ryan’s body now turns to his whenever he hears the start of a whisper, preparing himself for the laughter that will come. So when Ryan looks back at all his time pursuing his dreams in LA, he finds that to be the benchmark, the bookmark; the thread that keeps everything together is Shane. He is the common point to where the rest of his life moves around. So when Shane comes up to him one day, saying how tired he is of Buzzfeed rules and regulations, saying how much he wants to be a part of something of his own creation, Ryan doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even think before saying yes.

Shane’s eyebrows had shot up, one of the few moments in their very long history that Ryan had managed to get the drop on his tall friend.

“Do you even know what I’m saying?” he had asked, quietly, still looking around to make sure no one could hear them.

Ryan just looked up at him and smiled.

“You and me, baby. I’m all in. Let’s do this.”

This is the conversation that’s ringing in his ears when they go on their next Buzzfeed Unsolved trip. Ryan knows it’s not normal to want to follow your best friend to the ends of the earth. He recognizes this. But now he’s fully aware of the fact that wherever Shane goes, Ryan will follow. Wherever Shane is, Ryan wants to be. 

The place they were at was creepy, not as creepy as some of the places they’d been (any prison or hospital ranked higher than this because… death and stuff) but it was a fairly ghoulish house. It was owned by a woman, who apparently was so in love with her best friend that she jumped off the roof of her house after finding out that her partner was betrothed to a man. Honestly, Ryan thought it was kind of metal. He’d never loved someone like that (maybe before now, that stupid voice reminded him) and he respected that level of devotion. It was said that her spirit lingered in her house, pushing people together, like some gay afterlife cupid/fairy godmother.

“So, here was the woman’s bedroom..” Ryan glanced around, and then looked at Shane. He had a mischievous smile, the one he has almost every time he introduces the Hot Daga saga in each post mortem. 

“Lots of love letters written in this room, aye?”

Sometimes Shane was like.. a dog on a scent. He was always looking for a bit, something else that could make them, and their audience, laugh and smile. That’s just the kind of guy he was, Shane Madej, master of bringing joy to Ryan Bergara and the world. Just a stupidly tall, wonderful, ray of sunshine. 

Ryan smirks back at him.

“Yes, lots of love letters..”

“That’s one word for them..” Shane very animatedly looks at the camera, as to say, “not just love letters, were they?” 

When he and Shane go on one of these little bit tangents, it honestly feels like it’s just them, no cameras. They hop in and out of each other’s worlds, and no one else can catch up with them. It was exhilarating.

Ryan continues on with his story. 

“So the woman who lived here said her greatest regret was not telling her lover how she felt, so legend has it she forces people together, so that they don’t live in regret like she did.” Ryan says this while getting settled on the bed, looking up at Shane while they set up the cameras in the room to prepare for the spirit box session.

He can already see Shane wince, preparing himself for the noise of the spirit box that will undoubtedly carry throughout the room.

“Well, let’s see if this ghostly matchmaker has anything to say to old Buzzfeed Unsolved, huh?” Shane says, with a glint in his eye that says he’s okay with what’s happening.

Lately, Ryan hasn’t been sure if he was… okay with everything. Buzzfeed Unsolved has always started out as his baby.. It felt burdensome to ask Shane for anything more than maybe custody on the weekends. And he knew that the spirit box genuinely irked Shane.

When the noise started thundering from the spirit box, at first it was nothing but nonsense. Just Shane, looming over Ryan in a dirty, dilapidated room, looking at Ryan as to say, “see? Isn’t this shit ridiculous?”

But, as soon as that look of victory appeared on Shane’s face, a name came from the box.

“Ryan.”

It was clear. Clear enough to make Shane pause and look down at the box. Ryan could feel his hands tremor. It’s not like he didn’t believe in the spirit box but this was.. Different. It sounded like a woman’s voice. And then right after that, it whispered again.

“Loves.”

Ryan felt a chill go all the way down his spine. There was no way. But there was. He could tell from Shane’s face, still and calculated, and Devon and TJ’s faces, they heard it too.

One last word from the spirit box.

“Shane.”

Before it suddenly, with no prior notion, switched off. After a very uncomfortable silence, there was an attempt at a recovery. Shane nervously giggling, looking at the cameras and going, “Someone has read our youtube comments huh?” Ryan attempted to look at Shane but he just couldn't. He could hear his heart pounding, blisteringly loud and annoying and saying over and over again, “Ryan Loves Shane.” He felt stuck. It was always so obvious. The way that Ryan would always search for Shane’s eyes in segments, always cracking jokes and seeing, hoping, praying for one of those surprised laughs out of Shane. It was like an addiction. He’d pour over the edits, counting the times that he’d look over at his best friend for approval. There wasn’t anything Ryan could ever do about cutting them out. The way that he loved Shane, it radiated off him. You’d have to cut him out of the whole damn show. 

And now, it felt like all those moments rolled into one. It was too much all of the sudden. He needed to leave. He couldn’t stand here and watch TJ and Devon and.. Shane.. look at him like that, like they knew. Not only like they knew, but they pitied him for it.

With a seriousness he mostly lacked on set, Ryan said, “I need to take a break,” before hastily taking his mic pac off and running out of the house, to the car.

He just needed a moment to catch his breath and think. Ryan knew that logically, running out after all that made him look that much guiltier, but he just couldn’t stand it. They probably knew anyway. He’d never been known for his subtlety. It felt like too much. Maybe, just maybe, he’d have been able to squash this ridiculous, stupid thing for his favorite coworker but now that it was out there in the open, it felt too enormous to ignore. 

Fuck. What was he going to do?

The car wasn’t even on. The keys remained in Ryan’s pocket. It was freezing, but his palms were somehow still sweating. That made Ryan laugh, almost maniacally. He starts singing to himself, “my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy..” before sighing dramatically. What was he even doing? He was hiding in an old toyota prius from his best friend because of what? Some ghost was deciding to fuck with him? What even was his life? That thought made Ryan start to laugh again. It was all just so, ridiculous. As the laughter died in his throat, tears started to make their way down his face. God, he was so fucked. This was all so fucked. 

Suddenly, the car door opened and the one and only Shane stepped in, all 6 foot 4 of him. His face looked serious and determined, which wasn’t natural for him. It felt like their lives were just a continuous series of bits, one after another. Ryan looked at Shane, his friend, his best friend, one of the most important people in his life. He desperately wanted to wipe the unnaturally serious look on his friend’s face. 

“Fancy meeting you here, buddy.” Shane was attempting to lighten the mood, to strip away the heaviness of this moment, this heavy feeling of a moment. 

“Just, give me a second, Shane. I’ll be back out there soon. I just need a second.” Ryan desperately didn’t want to have this conversation. Fuck this ghost. He hadn’t even accepted this within himself. How was he supposed to explain this to Shane? Seriously, fuck that ghost.

“See, you’re saying you’re fine, but you are currently hiding in the car, shaking, and not looking me in the eyes. So survey says that’s wrong.” Shane was clearly waiting for him to look in his eyes, those spacers with crinkles around the edges that he just wanted to see light up again, and again, and again. Fuck, was he always this romantic? Did he have these thoughts about Helen? Is this what it feels like to fall in love with your best friend? Ryan didn’t want to be a coward. He wasn’t going to be a goddamn wimp. So, he looks at Shane. Shane Madej, his about to be business partner, his partner in fighting ghoulies, his partner in almost all things. Shane looked..tentative, like he was approaching a math problem he hadn’t quite figured out how to solve. Is that what he saw Ryan as? Was that accurate? He summoned enough courage to look at his best friend and quietly ask, “Can we just, not do this?”

Shane shook his head in response. “What even is ‘this?’ Why did you run away?

Ryan felt a bout of anger he didn’t even know was possible with Shane. Why was he torturing him like this? Why couldn’t he just pretend nothing happened? Why did he have to make everything so fucking hard all the time? (There was a joke in there somewhere. But the situation was simply too grim for Ryan to make it.) 

He knew his anger was misplaced, and misguided, at best. But he could feel it crackling within him. He sighed before huffing out, “Are you seriously that stupid, Shane? You know why.”

Shyly, Shane gave him a knowing look back as a response, as if to say, “I see you, Bergara.” It lifted something off of Ryan’s chest. Maybe he’d make it out of this alive. Possibly.  
Was Shane playing with him? Did Shane see where this was heading? Was he enjoying this? 

With another sigh, Shane turned his gangly, too long limbs and placed a hand on Ryan’s shoulder, a small touch that made Ryan’s insides curdle, and maybe explode, and maybe want to jump off a cliff and die. Fuck, there was no way he was making out of this in one piece. Just that simple touch made him shiver. “Maybe I am stupid. Explain it to me.” He took his hand off Ryan’s shoulder. 

“The ghost said that I-” He paused, closing his eyes. He couldn’t look at his friend for this. He couldn’t watch himself potentially ruin the best goddamn thing that ever happened to him. ”loved you.”

This is possibly the most embarrassing conversation that Ryan has ever had, and that includes the one time when he was 13 when his mom caught him jerking off to porn in his room. Although that was a verrrrry close second. 

But of course, Shane takes everything in stride. He blinks slowly at him, face neutral, and says, “I know. I was there. Are you freaking out more about the ghost thing or what the ghost said?” He probably knows the answer to this question, Ryan thinks in the moment. He seems to always understand him, where the root of his anxieties and panic and overthinking lies. Shane just always understands, and is always there to help Ryan see it through. 

Ryan does the only thing he can think to do: deflect, baby. And deflect hard. 

“So you agree the ghost said something!”

There’s a glint in Ryan’s eye and he thinks desperately, 

take the bait.  
Please let me get out of this.  
Please stop seeing me so so fucking clearly.

Turning again, so that Shane’s body is as towards Ryan’s as it can be in this probably bad for Shane’s limbs car, Shane beats back, “I agree to nothing. I can see why you’d think that that was a ghost.”

There’s the banter that Ryan is so desperate for. This is how they’ll leave the car with his dignity in tact, hopefully. 

“Are you really denying the existence of ghosts after that? Are you serious, bro?” 

His friend gives him a look that says, “God, I’m way too old for this,” and then okay, there’s a layer of shame just on the surface for Ryan to feel bad about later. 

“Stop deflecting, man. Cmon. Not now.”

Shane sounds disappointed, but Ryan can’t focus on that. He just needs to get out of this. He can feel bad about his lack of courage later. Ryan can feel himself turning inward, coming as close to the door as possible, making all his limbs as tightly bound as he can. For a second, he feels so small, and Shane looks so old. When will he ever stop burdening the people around him?

Quietly, softly, as small as possible, Ryan asks the question. 

“What do you want me to say?”

which really means,

Why are you in this car with me?  
Why couldn’t you just leave this alone?

and, most importantly,

What the fuck do you want from me, Shane Madej? 

Shane pauses, and Ryan finally stops trying to take as little space as possible to look over at him. He looks.. pensive, contemplative. Like he’s trying to choose every word as purposely as possible. Like Ryan is some abandoned kitten on the road that he’s desperately trying to not scare away. 

“Why did you freak out about what the spirit box said?”

He chose his words well, because of course Shane did. It’s fucking impossible, how sharp he is. And how well he knows Ryan. But there was a reason, when Ryan first watched Wizard of Oz, he identified with the Lion. He makes one last desperate attempt to banter his way out of this life altering situation he’s gotten himself into. 

“Can’t just say ghost, huh?”

Please just let me do this he thinks. Please don’t make me ruin everything. 

Shane shakes his head as if to say, I know what you’re thinking, and no, you can’t get out of this. Sorry, champ. 

And if that wasn’t clear enough, his friend stares, resolutely, “The question, Ryan. Answer it.”

It actually makes Ryan a little angry, all be it unfairly, that Shane can pinpoint him so accurately. It’s the same anger that follows when he’ll show Shane evidence, which he thinks is compelling, to which his partner will tear apart. It doesn’t matter what Ryan does. He’ll never get out from this guy’s sharp eyes. There’s no running, no hiding. It feels impossible to win, although he’s not sure what winning really looks like. 

And then, if Ryan dares to be actually truthful of himself, he wonders if he actually minds being taken apart by him. He wonders if he minds how quickly Shane can see him. He wonders if this is what it actually feels like to be known. 

But that surface anger, the disillusioned feeling, is the one that comes out right now, is the one that can keep him safe. The only way to go about this is to pin it back on Shane because fuck him for cornering Ryan like this. 

“You haven’t put that shit together yet? Cmon, big guy. I thought you were smarter than this. Thought they grew people better than this in Illinois.” 

Shane rolls his eyes and shrugs in a self deprecating manner, “Well, yeah, maybe I’m slow on the uptake. Explain it to me.”

Just because a cat is feigning indifference or laziness doesn’t mean he can’t catch that fucking mouse once he starts chasing it. 

Ryan shrugs back. 

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. Try again.”

There’s a swipe of the claw. Does the mouse even know that it’s cornered yet? Maybe he thinks that there’s a way out of it. 

One last attempt. Ryan knows he sounds desperate but he knows what it means if Shane gets his way here. It’ll be the end to their effortless chemistry, for starters. And also, weirdness from Shane for probably the rest of their lives. 

“We should go back inside. TJ and Devon are probably wondering where we are.”

“No offense to them but I honestly couldn’t care less about that right now. Why are you hiding in here?” He says the last sentence as if every word was bolded and capitalized with punctuation in between. If Shane were the type for dramatics, Ryan could imagine him saying it with a pointed finger, angrily pushing him with it after every line. But Shane’s anger doesn’t manifest like that. It never has. 

But the mouse finally knows that it has been caught. And Ryan sighs. There goes that. 

Shane had been boring holes with his eyes into Ryan up until now, and Ryan was trying to look at him back, trying to be unafraid of the back and forth that they were playing. He wants to look anywhere else right now, but if he’s going to do this honesty not looking back thing, he wants to do it right. Shane deserves that. He once said that Ryan was really the only friend he made when he moved from the Midwest. Shane deserves to be looked in the eyes when Ryan tears that to pieces. 

“Because she’s right. Shane. Fuck. Ghost woman was right.”

He puts his head in his hands. This is going to actually fuck everything up. He feels the weight of what he’s saying, what he’s really saying, in every single part of his body. Panic is breaking down his bones. 

Shane is unrelenting in his torture of Ryan.

“What was she right about?” He says it softly, gently, and then wraps his too big hand around Ryan’s wrist, pulling his hands out of his hair so he can look back up at Shane. 

When Ryan can’t say anything, can’t find those stupid words, can’t grow some stupid courage, Shane’s thumb finds his way to the pulse point on his friend’s wrist and he rubs over it, soothing him. 

“Please. I just need to hear it.”

The intimacy and the quietness of this moment has Ryan thinking , maybe. 

This one word is what propels him further, further into this abyss that they’ve created in this car, this quiet, private world of theirs. 

“I think about you. A lot.” He pauses, and then sighs loudly. In for a penny. “More than I should.”

The shoe is about to drop. Does Shane know that? Is he waiting for it?

“That’s not abnormal. We’re very involved in each other’s lives. And you’re my best friend.”

Ryan smiles a little at that. Even after all this time, it still makes him feel something when Shane calls him his best friend. Shane thinks he’s the best at something. Ryan is the best at loving him. 

“Not like that. Not like I should.”

And he thinks of the nights, the nights he’s come home drunk after going out with Shane. He thinks of laying in his bed, working his hand into his pants. He thinks about when he’d finally touch himself, about the crinkles in Shane’s face when he laughs. He’d think about Shane’s mouth wrapped around his bottle of beer. He remembers coming to the idea of his big, tall friend on his knees in front of him, mouth wrapped around Ryan instead. 

“How do you think about me, Ry?”

God it’s the nickname that gets him. Their whole friendship, they’ve been finding new ways to talk about the other. New ways to describe the other person, new ways to put placeholders instead of names. Ry is the best of all of them. 

Shane moves his hand, once on Ryan’s wrist, to the curve of his neck, to where his shoulder and neck aligned. But he doesn’t move his thumb. He’s prodding more, insisting more information out of his friend. They are falling off a cliff together, and Shane is making sure that Ryan is really jumping. 

“I think about you when I wake up. I think about you when I go to bed.”

I think about you when I’m making something. I think about your approval. I think about you in bed. What would you be like with me? How would you let me know that I was yours? 

“Anything else?” 

It makes Ryan want to look back at his friend and plead, How high, baby? How high do you want me to jump? How far is this fall? 

“Any time I make a joke, I look to you to see if it’s funny. I always want to make you laugh.” 

The last part of the sentence is soft and jumpy and it makes him want to giddily laugh, the kind of laugh you only do when you’ve been up for 30 hours and still have two assignments left and you just rediscovered the word moist. 

The thumb that was once static on the curve of Ryan’s neck starts moving. 

“Anything else?”

“I realized that, when I said yes to you about the business thing, I didn’t even hesitate. Because it’s you. And it’s me. And I’d follow you in almost any situation. I’d do anything to make you smile, to laugh, to make you happy. Fuck it scares me,” Ryan takes a pause before looking at Shane, “the things I’d do for you.” 

There was silence.

“Okay, Ryan. I’m going to kiss you now. And you’re just going to have to.. Say something. If you don’t want me to.”

And then that’s what he was doing. Shane was kissing Ryan. Shane’s impossibly long fingers were spread around Ryan’s neck while the other hand reached for Ryan’s tousled hair. It was soft and sweet and careful and it made Ryan ache for every single part of his best friend. When Shane started to pull away, to soften the kiss to chasteness, well, Ryan wasn’t having it. He wanted, he needed, more. Ryan’s hands, once stuck to his sides, now flung to Shane, reaching around his lengthy body, pulling him forward. His hands met in the middle of Shane’s back, awkwardly reached over the console, but Ryan didn’t care. All he cared about was that Shane was taking the hint, and was moving forward so that they were chest to chest, deepening the connection between them. And then it was just that, just Ryan and Shane but in a new, brighter way, with tongues and pants and groans and more. 

This time, when Shane softened the kiss, Ryan let him. Shane pulled away from his mouth, but gently kissed Ryan’s left cheek, then right cheek, before fully pulling away. 

Ryan finally opened his eyes. Shane was looking at him, feigning neutrality, but Ryan saw the pink blush forming on his neck, and on the tips of his ears. His ghoulish friend couldn’t fool him, not when they were like this. All he could do was smile at his tall friend in return. 

Shane had just given him so much, maybe even a key to the rest of his life. It felt like the shorter boy’s job to break this delicate air they’d constructed together. Clearing his throat, Ryan asked, “So uh, how about that ghostie, huh?”

There was a thick silence before Shane gave him one of those bellowing, soul sucking laughs. Pretty soon it was just the both of them, air filled with laughter and joy and maybes. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ryan. You’re relentless.” It sounded like an insult but Shane’s eyes were so bright that again, Ryan knew better. Things were going to be okay. He wasn’t alone in this. Again, it was Ryan and Shane. Together they could get through.. anything.

Ryan tapped Shane’s shoulder in a way that definitely didn’t say, I’m so crazy about you, and then huffed out, “You ready to admit the Boogaras have won yet, big guy?”

Shane smirked at his friend, and again, they were sitting there, grinning at each other, in their own world. “Get out of the car already, Jesus.”

Laughing, Ryan obliged, and they rounded the corner together.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, big guy.”

**Author's Note:**

> I could be tempted to make this a series because I have lots of feelings™️ about them, let me know if you’d be interested in hearing said feelings™️
> 
> also my tumblr is RChaha if you want to come cry about them with me, that’s literally all I do nowadays. 2020 am I right, theydies?


End file.
